Lydia E. Kavraki
Lydia E. Kavraki researches robot motion planning and computational biomedicine. With Petr Švestka, Jean-Claude Latombe and Mark Overmars she published probabilistic-roadmap planning in 1996. Her shared 1998 work analyzed how roadmap size and path geometry affect planning. AAAI elected her a Fellow in 2008. With Ioan Şucan and Mark Moll she published the Open Motion Planning Library in 2012. Her lab later connects planning and geometric computation with robot interaction, molecular docking and the analysis of flexible molecular structures.
- Now at
- Rice University
- Works
- 465
- Citations
- 25,492
- h-index
- 71
Publication numbers from OpenAlex, as of 14 October 2026.
Timeline
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1996
Probabilistic roadmaps
Kavraki, Petr Švestka, Jean-Claude Latombe and Mark Overmars published probabilistic roadmaps for high-dimensional configuration spaces in 1996. The original abstract describes building a graph of collision-free robot configurations and using it to answer path queries. The work makes repeated motion queries possible through a shared sampled representation.
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1998–2008
Analysis and AI recognition
With Mihail Kolountzakis and Latombe, Kavraki published a 1998 analysis of probabilistic roadmaps. Her analysis relates planning failure probability to path geometry and roadmap size. AAAI elected her a Fellow in 2008.
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2012
A shared motion-planning library
Ioan Şucan, Mark Moll and Kavraki published the Open Motion Planning Library paper in December 2012. The library provides reusable sampling-based planning algorithms, interfaces and teaching resources. The library supports adding methods and connecting them to other software.
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Lab research
Robots and molecular configurations
Kavraki researches task-and-motion planning, manifold-constrained movement and applications involving robot interaction and underwater navigation. Her work also covers molecular docking, conformational analysis and computational immunotherapy research.
Sources and credits
Photo: www.kavrakilab.rice.edu; creator not stated. License: Not stated by source. Source: kavrakilab.rice.edu. Cropped to a square and resized. Ask us to remove or replace this photo.